Pandas 2.3.3 and rhel7 compatibility

[rtsscy]

Hi team! It looks like prebuilt manylinux_2_17 for RHEL 7+ wheel is no longer included in pandas 2.3.3, instead offering manylinux_2_24. Wondering if this shift in manylinux wheel support is an intentional change for this release and future versions?

[NicolasHanus]

Also impacting us for CI on SLES 12.

[jefverschuerend09]

I just encountered a similar issue with the latest 2.3.3 release, but we're running RHEL8.10 with glibc2.28. Failed to install. It seems to me that the manylinux_2_24 package should work, but this is all new to me.

For whatever it's worth, here's my pip log (from ansible)

fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "cmd": ["/usr/bin/python3.9", "-m", "pip.main", "install", "pandas"], "msg": "stdout: Collecting pandas
Downloading pandas-2.3.3.tar.gz (4.5 MB)
Installing build dependencies: started
Installing build dependencies: finished with status 'done'
Getting requirements to build wheel: started
Getting requirements to build wheel: finished with status 'done'
Installing backend dependencies: started
Installing backend dependencies: finished with status 'done'
Preparing wheel metadata: started
Preparing wheel metadata: finished with status 'error'

:stderr: WARNING: Running pip install with root privileges is generally not a good idea. Try python3.9 -m pip install --user instead.
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
command: /usr/bin/python3.9 /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pip/vendor/pep517/in_process.py prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel /tmp/tmpwf1o6xl1
cwd: /tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas
Complete output (22 lines):
+ meson setup /tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas /tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas/.mesonpy-9aeays0 -Dbuildtype=release -Db_ndebug=if-release -Db_vscrt=md --vsenv --native-file=/tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas/.mesonpy-9aeays0/meson-python-native-file.ini
The Meson build system
Version: 1.9.1
Source dir: /tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas
Build dir: /tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas/.mesonpy-9aeays0_
Build type: native build
Project name: pandas
Project version: 2.3.3
C compiler for the host machine: cc (gcc 8.5.0 \"cc (GCC) 8.5.0 20210514 (Red Hat 8.5.0-22)\")
C linker for the host machine: cc ld.bfd 2.30-123

../meson.build:2:0: ERROR: Unknown compiler(s): [['c++'], ['g++'], ['clang++'], ['nvc++'], ['pgc++'], ['icpc'], ['icpx']]
The following exception(s) were encountered:
Running c++ --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'c++'\"
Running g++ --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'g++'\"
Running clang++ --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'clang++'\"
Running nvc++ --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'nvc++'\"
Running pgc++ --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'pgc++'\"
Running icpc --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'icpc'\"
Running icpx --version gave \"[Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'icpx'\"

A full log can be found at /tmp/pip-install-se1wuich/pandas/.mesonpy-9aeays0_/meson-logs/meson-log.txt
----------------------------------------
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: /usr/bin/python3.9 /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/_in_process.py prepare_metadata_for_build_wheel /tmp/tmpwf1o6xl1 Check the logs for full command output.
"}

I'm aware that this is python3.9 which is going EOL but given that there's a python3.9 manylinux_2_24 build it seems like it should work?

[Alvaro-Kothe]

Hi team! It looks like prebuilt manylinux_2_17 for RHEL 7+ wheel is no longer included in pandas 2.3.3, instead offering manylinux_2_24. Wondering if this shift in manylinux wheel support is an intentional change for this release and future versions?

Pandas uses pypa/cibuildwheel to build its wheels. The minimum default glibc version supported is 2.28. I don't think it's possible to support any prior version.

For reference, here is the link for the supported images with the different glibc versions.

---

but we're running RHEL8.10 with glibc2.28. Failed to install.

@jefverschuerend09 Very odd. What is the result if you try to install from the wheel directly?

$ wheel_url="https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/1f/18/aae8c0aa69a386a3255940e9317f793808ea79d0a525a97a903366bb2569/pandas-2.3.3-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_24_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl"
$ pip install "$wheel_url"

From the error message, it seems it's trying to compile from source, and you don't have a C++ compiler installed.

---

Edit: Looks like it is possible to use manylinux2014 to support glibc>=2.17.

[jefverschuerend09]

According to https://pypi.org/project/pandas/2.3.2/#files the 2.3.2 release did actually have a pandas-2.3.2-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl build. Something must have changed.

Does pandas 2.3.0 even support python3.9? The 2.3.0 release notes mention it has been dropped.

I've tried performing the install on my development environment and as an ansible playbook.

fresh python3.9 venv

$ pip install "$wheel_url"
Collecting pandas==2.3.3
Downloading pandas-2.3.3-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_24_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl (12.8 MB)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 12.8/12.8 MB 213.9 MB/s 0:00:00
Collecting numpy>=1.22.4 (from pandas==2.3.3)
Downloading numpy-2.0.2-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl.metadata (60 kB)
Collecting python-dateutil>=2.8.2 (from pandas==2.3.3)
Downloading python_dateutil-2.9.0.post0-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (8.4 kB)
Collecting pytz>=2020.1 (from pandas==2.3.3)
Downloading pytz-2025.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (22 kB)
Collecting tzdata>=2022.7 (from pandas==2.3.3)
Downloading tzdata-2025.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.4 kB)
Collecting six>=1.5 (from python-dateutil>=2.8.2->pandas==2.3.3)
Downloading six-1.17.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.7 kB)
Downloading numpy-2.0.2-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (19.5 MB)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 19.5/19.5 MB 221.5 MB/s 0:00:00
Downloading python_dateutil-2.9.0.post0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (229 kB)
Downloading pytz-2025.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (509 kB)
Downloading six-1.17.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (11 kB)
Downloading tzdata-2025.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (347 kB)
Installing collected packages: pytz, tzdata, six, numpy, python-dateutil, pandas
Successfully installed numpy-2.0.2 pandas-2.3.3 python-dateutil-2.9.0.post0 pytz-2025.2 six-1.17.0 tzdata-2025.2

Ansible execution environment:

{
"cmd": [
"/usr/bin/python3.9",
"-m",
"pip.main",
"install",
"https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/1f/18/aae8c0aa69a386a3255940e9317f793808ea79d0a525a97a903366bb2569/pandas-2.3.3-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_24_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl"
],
"msg": "\n:stderr: WARNING: Running pip install with root privileges is generally not a good idea. Try python3.9 -m pip install --user instead.\nERROR: pandas-2.3.3-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_24_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform.\n",
"invocation": {
"module_args": {
"name": [
"https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/1f/18/aae8c0aa69a386a3255940e9317f793808ea79d0a525a97a903366bb2569/pandas-2.3.3-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_24_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl"
],
"state": "present",
"virtualenv_site_packages": false,
"virtualenv_command": "virtualenv",
"editable": false,
"version": null,
"requirements": null,
"virtualenv": null,
"virtualenv_python": null,
"extra_args": null,
"chdir": null,
"executable": null,
"umask": null
}
},
"_ansible_no_log": false,
"changed": false
}

The execution environment is a thing of its own and seems to be somewhat different. I'm not our in-house ansible admin though, so can't do too much on that front.

Is this related to #61563 ?

[rtsscy]

Edit: Looks like it is possible to use manylinux2014 to support glibc>=2.17.

@Alvaro-Kothe Yes, release 2.3.2 has manylinux_2_17 wheel. Did something change here or would it be possible to include the manylinux_2_17 wheel in future releases?

[Alvaro-Kothe]

Did something change here

The default image used to build the wheel from pypa/cibuildwheel changed. Dropping support for glibc<2.28 was a side effect.

would it be possible to include the manylinux_2_17 wheel in future releases?

It's not up to me.

[rhshadrach]

cc @jorisvandenbossche @mroeschke

[jorisvandenbossche]

Wondering if this shift in manylinux wheel support is an intentional change for this release and future versions?

It was not intentional in the sense that we (at least I) weren't aware that this change happened, but the tool we use for building wheels, cibuildwheel, intentionally changed their default manylinux build (https://cibuildwheel.pypa.io/en/stable/changelog/#v300), as @Alvaro-Kothe mentioned above.

And we updated the cibuildwheel version to be able to add Python 3.14 support, without considering the side effect of bumping the manylinux version (if not specifically updating the configuration to keep it).

It is unfortunate that this manylinux version bump happened in a bugfix release (and I am happy to consider a 2.3.4 release to add them back), but longer term (and for the next major release 3.0) I think we want to keep the change a bumped manylinux version. Especially given the fact that also numpy bumped their manylinux version a few months ago with their 2.3.0 release (https://numpy.org/doc/2.3/release/2.3.0-notes.html)

[jorisvandenbossche]

FWIW, I was curious why people run into compilation issues with pandas, and not already with numpy which would need to be installed before compiling pandas, and so which also bumped the manylinux version. But I assume this is because numpy 2.3 also does not support Python 3.9 (or 3.10), thus when installing pandas on 3.9, you will get an older numpy version which also still has the older manylinux wheels.